Bias Evident In Attacks On Houses Of Worship

[00:00:00]I am Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League. Mike McDonald joining me today, director of communications.

[00:00:05]Today we're going to talk about vandalizing houses of worship. Now, we don't care what religion it is. It's wrong, whether it's a mosque, whether it's a temple, uh a church, a synagogue, it makes no difference.

[00:00:16]Uh but there's been a rash of it recently in New York, and the way the media and even the police have handled it shows disparate treatment. I'll turn it over to Mike at this point.

[00:00:25]>> Yeah, thanks, Bill. Uh yes, we were looking into the recently in the last week two instances of vandalism committed against Catholic churches, and they got very little coverage in the media at all.

[00:00:36]So, we decided to look around at New York City to see where things stood for Catholic churches through the course of 2026 and other houses of worship. And interestingly enough, there's been six instances of vandalism at Catholic churches, and that's more than any other group. Uh and all other groups actually combined, there were only five instances for all other houses of worship, but six for the Catholic church. And a very little coverage, most of it coming from local, like the Rockaway Times, things like that that most people outside of the city would never have heard of. Uh but then interestingly enough, as you'd mentioned, there's not just disparate proportion between how the media covers it, but also instances where the police, you kind of have to scratch your head and wonder like who made this exact decision. The first instance of uh violence uh vandalism, anything like that committed against Catholic church this year, back in January, St. Ann's down in Staten Island.

[00:01:36]A mentally disturbed person, according to the police, went up there and interrupted the mass, right? This is >> That's an invasion.

[00:01:41]>> a church invasion. He invades the church, the cops respond quickly, they arrest the guy, but they don't charge him with a hate crime. Instead, they just ding him for assaulting an officer, which okay, that's a big deal, but who made that decision? Why didn't we look at that? Because when you look at uh the first instance of violence against uh vandalism against a Jewish house of worship, uh a mentally disturbed person, according to the police, rammed his car five times into the facility, and he got uh he was facing uh hate crimes on the state level and local level. Uh feds came in and said, "Well, we'll charge him with something different." But, he still was investigated for hate crime, but not the Catholic guy. There there seems to be a little bit of >> What what bothered me, too, about the Catholic Church is that the latest incidents that that just took took place, uh they got the least amount of media coverage. Now, you would think that if Catholic churches are being targeted more than any other house of worship, that there'd be greater increase in in uh media attention because it's whenever you have a spike, you begin to think, you know, is there a pattern here? Instead, it just uh there was less. But, you know, the reason why we want to talk about this is that houses of worship, again, it doesn't make any difference which religion we're talking about. You got to remember what happened in January.

[00:03:00]Remember St. Paul, Minnesota?

[00:03:02]People went in there, 39 people arrested, they disrupted a church service, they told the children that your your parents are Nazis, they got in the face of kids, they wouldn't allow the minister to continue the services.

[00:03:16]It was absolutely incredible.

[00:03:18]And the the Trump administration acted very well. You you violated the FACE Act. You can't do something like this.

[00:03:25]The woman who's the St. Paul attorney dropped all charges.

[00:03:30]And I wrote to her last month about this.

[00:03:33]How dare she drop all charges? She said there wasn't any violence. If people went into her office, stormed into her office, and and and make clear that she could not do her work, obstructed her work, but there was no violence.

[00:03:47]Wouldn't she call the police and have them arrested?

[00:03:49]I mean, this is this is this is astonishing that you have a woman who's a sitting attorney in St. Paul dismissing all charges against these people for a church invasion. It's a Nazi-like tactic to go into a house of worship and stop people from worshipping. So, what happened in New York is is is is one example. I don't care where it is, any place in the country, we need to speak with one voice on this because otherwise, these people will continue. And it's not just an assault on one person. This is a collective assault on people of faith.

[00:04:21]When you go into a house of worship and you stop people from worshipping and vandalizing, that's an attack which is a collective statement.

[00:04:29]Thank you.